by Tasha Black
He reached over and tugged her wrist and she found herself tumbling almost on top of him.
She gasped. Fear and excitement mixed in her chest. Timidly, she placed on hand on his chest. It looked like a doll’s hand on his massive torso.
“I like your dress,” he laughed. “It will look even better on the floor.”
Before she knew what to do, he had reached behind her to unzip her.
It felt wrong. She sat up quickly.
“Clive, I know we both have an idea of where this night will go, but I don’t feel ready yet.”
A look of alarm crossed his handsome features.
“Ainsley, you’ve done this before, right?”
Of course she hadn’t…OH. She looked at her hands.
“You mean have sex?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, I have had sex before.”
“Oh, that’s good!” He looked relieved and disappointed at the same time.
She tried not to notice his expressions, and plowed on.
“But I’ve never drawn an alpha before. The whole wolf thing is new to me. And you’re new to me too.”
“But not really,” he said, stroking her arm. “We knew each other all our lives until you moved away.”
Ainsley thought about that.
It was true, although they hadn’t spent any time together since they were kids. She thought about the rope tree and the creek.
And Erik.
“We weren’t close though, were we?” she asked instead.
He shook his head and let his hand graze her breast instead of her arm. His heart sped and she could feel the warmth of his skin through her dress.
“What are you doing?”
“Ainsley, we’re going to be mated. Forever. You’re mine now. Just let go, enjoy it. I’m planning to enjoy it a lot.”
“We are going to be mated,” she agreed. “Why don’t you tell me about your life? It will be my life too, right? You can touch me while you tell me if you want,” she added.
He looked a little annoyed, but the invitation to touch placated him.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, letting his hand curve around her left breast.
“Where do you live?” Ainsley asked, trying to concentrate.
“I live in my Dad’s old house, on Drexel,” he glanced up to answer, then went back to her breast. He cupped it, as though he was weighing it, like a steak, then slid his thumb over her nipple.
It felt nice but Ainsley tried not to react to his touch. It was good to get him talking.
Outside, the rain finally began to fall.
“How did you decide to become a police officer?”
“I dunno’, my Dad, I guess.”
“Did he encourage you?”
“Nope, not really. But I liked the way he was. He worked hard and everyone respected him. And the uniforms are top notch.”
“You look really handsome in yours,” she admitted.
He smiled and leaned his head against her belly. His hand moved from her breast down to her hip.
Ainsley tried to keep her cool as he mouthed her stomach. She was not a thin woman, but she could tell by the way he was nuzzling and nipping that he was satisfied.
“Was your dad glad you became a policeman?”
He groaned into her and then pulled back.
“Yes.”
They stared each other down. Thunder crashed outside. Ainsley broke the silence.
“What do you do in your time off?”
“I go to bars and, um, meet women. Or watch TV or listen to the radio on my back porch.”
“Do you ever go on vacation?”
“Sure.”
“Where do you go?”
“Down the shore. Rent a place with a few guys.”
“What do you do?”
“Swim, go to bars, meet women.”
“What else should I know about you?”
He blinked at her.
“Nothing,” he finally said.
“Do you want to know anything about me?”
“I’m gonna’ find out everything about you, Ainsley, I promise. Right now the only thing I want to know about you is how to get your clothes off.”
Ainsley laughed nervously. There was sweetness in his forthright approach. But it was intimidating to be in a small room with a gigantic guy who seemed like he was getting impatient.
“Okay, Clive, I’m not sure, but I think we need to draw your alpha before we, um, do it.”
“Oh, how do you do that?”
“I don’t know, but did you notice at the college that when we looked at each other there was a connection and something happened?”
“Yes,” he smiled.
“Well, I think that was the beginning of it.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I guess we could start by just looking into each other’s eyes?”
He sat up and looked at her. They were so close she felt almost cross-eyed.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe we should stand,” Ainsley suggested.
Clive shrugged. The mattress groaned heavily as he launched himself to his feet.
Ainsley joined him and looked into his eyes again. She thought about how handsome he was and how nice it was that he was the sheriff of the town she had grown up in.
He looked back at her with barely restrained lust. His blue eyes were almost hypnotic.
Suddenly there was a shimmer around his hair.
Her heart leapt, but as soon as she looked at it, it disappeared.
“Hey!” he said.
“Let’s do it again.”
Clive fixed her with a steamy look, this time he took her in his arms. She looked back hopefully and again there was a faint glimmer.
Suddenly, Ainsley’s skin was humming with electricity. This was different than any other time, but still weirdly familiar. Maybe it was working?
“Why are you doing this?”
The voice wasn’t Clive’s.
Chapter 14
Ainsley’s head whipped around.
“Brian.”
He was standing in the room with them. His face was perfect. He had a backpack on his back. Ainsley began to tremble.
“What?” Clive asked.
“You’re making a mistake,” Brian said.
Ainsley tried to force herself to breathe.
“What’s wrong?” Clive asked again.
Ainsley let go of Clive to turn to Brian.
Clive spun her around and tried to take her in his arms again. He searched her eyes in confusion. Some sort of understanding dawned in him.
“If you’re worried about getting pregnant, Ainsley, I can just cum on your tits,” Clive offered.
“Please don’t do this,” Brian implored.
“I know what I’m doing,” Ainsley replied, “Clive will protect the town, he already does, in a way.”
“Of course I will. What are you talking about?” Clive asked.
He couldn’t see the other person in the room with them.
“Clive Warren is the one that killed me,” Brian said simply.
“That’s not true,” Ainsley breathed.
“He did this to me!” Brian shouted.
Lightening flashed, illuminating Brian in pale blue light. Suddenly, his face was gored. His clothes were ripped. Blood covered him.
“No,” Ainsley cried, tearing her eyes away from Brian.
“Ainsley,” Clive said. “What the hell is going on?”
She met his eyes, searching. There was no way that could be true. Was there?
“Clive,” she asked, deciding to lay it all on the table. “Did you kill Brian Swinton?”
“What?” Clive asked.
“Did you kill Brian Swinton?”
“That math club kid from high school? I told him to stay away from you. He didn’t listen.” Ansley could see the anger building. Hear his heart hammering. “I followed you guys into the woods. It pissed me off to see you wi
th him. He wasn’t like us. He wasn’t a wolf. He wasn’t anything. He was weak. I stopped you from making a big mistake, Ainsley. It took you too long to get around to thanking me. Better late than never.”
Ainsley was speechless.
“Now, I know you say we need to make a connection, but I have a feeling that if we just get down to business it’ll work itself out.”
He moved as if to take her in his arms.
Ainsley sidestepped him.
“You’re not going to be alpha, Clive.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. “Get out.”
Clive froze. Then anger transformed his face. His livid expression twisted and distorted his handsome features until Ainsley would hardly have recognized him.
“You don’t tell me what to do, you fat little cunt,” he spat. “I will be alpha. I gave you plenty of chances to do this the easy way.”
In an instant Ainsley realized her mistake. Terror set into her bones. She was about to be attacked and raped by a guy the size of a giant. And there was no one to witness it but a ghost.
Desperately, she looked around the room. There was a window out onto the front porch roof. There was the door behind her. He would grab her before she could reach either.
She wished she had a weapon. In True Romance Patricia Arquette’s character fought off a guy by bludgeoning him with a toilet tank cover. But the bath was down the hall.
Clive took a step toward her and she backed into her dresser, knocking over a softball trophy from high school. Without thinking, she grabbed the trophy behind her back and waited.
When Clive took his next step, she hurled the trophy at him for all she was worth.
It hit him hard. Ainsley was grateful for a good pitching arm for the first time in ten years. Clive stepped back and she could see blood welling from a jagged cut across his face.
Then his eyes flashed yellow.
Clive was going to change.
He was going to tear her apart, just like he did to Brian.
This asshole had ruined her life, wrecked her relationship with her parents, killed someone she cared about, and now he was about to rape and murder her - all to feed his mindless ambition. And there was nothing she could do.
No.
No, there was something she could do.
She could shift. She could fight.
Frantically, she tried to remember how she’d felt when she almost shifted with Julian. What had she done to start it?
She hadn’t done anything. She had just been so furious, nothing could have stopped her.
But something did.
Clive took another step and she knew she had only seconds.
Ainsley ripped the words from her memory.
“Subsisto lupo mutatis!” she heard herself scream.
A wave of unwholesome blue light blasted from her fingertips, coiled around Clive and slammed him to the floor.
She had time to take in his shocked expression before bolting out the door and down the stairs.
“You bitch!” she heard him bellow as she flew through the kitchen toward the back door. “What did you do to me?”
Chapter 15
Ainsley crashed into the woods behind the house without breaking her stride.
Branches tore at her beautiful dress, but she didn’t care. The rain pelted down and drenched her. Soon she would look like the wild creature she was at heart.
She was vaguely aware that she was running barefoot through rocks and brambles. The little voice in her head warned her that she was sure to trip over a tree root if she insisted on being so heedless. That was the way it always happened in the movies.
Maybe she should hide?
She knew that Clive would be furious and she had no idea how long the magic would last. Even in his human form, he was bigger and stronger and faster than Ainsley. And of course he could track her, so hiding was out of the question.
So she ran on.
She ran without any sense of what lay ahead. Her whole consciousness was focused on what might be behind.
Something crashed through the branches close by.
Adrenaline kicked in, and she tore through the woods even faster than before.
She could barely hear over the sound of her own ragged breathing, but she thought the sounds were getting closer. It was something big.
Suddenly it crashed through the branches and whipped around to stand in front of her. The moonlight gleamed in its glossy fur. Its eyes were a burning amber.
Terrified, Ainsley tried to wrench the words out of her mind again.
“Sub…subsento…subsisto lupis mutatim!”
Nothing.
She had tripped over the words and now she was going to die.
As Ainsley prayed it would be quick, the wolf before her melted into human form.
Erik.
Ainsley’s knees went weak with relief and she began to sink to the ground, shivering as the cold rain finally caught up with her.
Quick as a thought, Erik’s strong arms were around her. For a moment, Ainsley allowed herself to rest her head on his warm chest.
“Ainsley, what happened?”
“I- I- Clive…” The words just wouldn’t come.
“It’s okay, you can tell me later, just try to relax.”
She sank against Erik again and tried to get her head together. In a few hundred heartbeats she began to feel better.
It dawned on her that he was naked. There was an incredible heat radiating off him. It soaked down to her bones and made her feel sleepy and exhilarated at the same time.
Although she knew she could probably explain everything now – and that it was imperative to do so, before Clive found them – she didn’t really want to let Erik go.
His arms felt like a fortress and his woodsy, masculine scent enveloped her. She felt that days or lifetimes could pass while she lost herself in his warm embrace.
With regret, she tore her head from his chest again and stole a glance around.
Her heart almost stopped. It was like they had gone back in time.
They were standing in front of the sycamore tree. The old tree fort was still mostly intact. The creek rushed by, swollen by the storm, frothing and bubbling over the rocky bed.
She had run without knowing where she was going and ended up here.
Wrenching her mind away from that thought, Ainsley looked Erik in the eyes.
“I was trying to choose Clive as the alpha.” She had to look away. “But I found out something awful about him. And when I asked him to leave he said he was going to be alpha and he tried to…um, force me.”
A low growl emanated from deep within Erik’s powerful chest.
“What did you do?” Erik’s face was incredulous.
“I hit him with my old softball trophy. And then I…”
How was she going to tell him about the spell? Wolves and Magic didn’t mix. She couldn’t risk turning Erik against her.
“Someone’s coming,” Erik said, before she could continue. “Ainsley, you need to shift.”
She gazed up at him mutely.
“Ainsley, you need to shift right now.”
“I – I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how? The same way you always do!”
“I mean…I’ve never shifted before.”
He stared at her in confusion. Suddenly, he lifted his nose to the wind, and the confused look disappeared.
“There’s no time to talk about this. There’s more than one wolf coming. I’ll shift to fight them. You run!”
Ainsley remembered the crazy look in Clive’s eyes.
“No, Erik, you can’t – they’ll tear you apart. We need to hide.”
Chapter 16
Clive thundered down the stairs and burst out the back door into the rain, but that dumb bitch was nowhere to be seen.
Although he wanted nothing more than to smash through the woods and catch her, he forced h
imself to be smart. A good cop calls for backup. Especially when the perp has a weapon.
And Ainsley certainly had a weapon. He wasn’t really sure what it was but the thought of what she had done scared him. Clive didn’t like to be scared.
He jogged around to the front of the house and realized he was naked.
Fuck. There was no time to get dressed.
He spied flowery blanket draped over a sofa on the front porch. After a quick sniff of the air to make sure none of the neighbors were around, he slunk onto the porch and wrapped the blanket around his waist. It wouldn’t do to have the good people of Tarker’s Hollow see their sheriff running around buck-naked.
Satisfied, he trotted down the street a ways to where a non-descript Malibu waited. He rapped on the roof, making the two guys inside jump out of their shoes.
Classic.
The driver’s side window slid down. The two kids inside were grinning widely.
“Hey, man, did you do it?” Justin asked.
“No, get out, NOW.”
Clive didn’t have time for these two jokers, but they were all he had. The two omegas were eager to please and didn’t ask a bunch of stupid questions – they were just glad to be recognized by a high-ranking beta.
He thought he had been pretty smart to send them into the house ahead of time on Ainsley’s Neighborly.com ad. That way they knew the layout and could help if things got sticky once he got started.
He never thought she’d get out of the house.
Will scrambled out the passenger side and Justin hopped over the hood to join him on the sidewalk, slipping on the wet surface and hitting his ass pretty hard on the way down.
Clive pretended not to notice, though he wanted to cuff the kid. Instead, he strode purposefully to the back of the house. The omegas scampered after him.
“What happened?” Justin asked, trying to shield his eyes from the downpour.
“She did something to me and I can’t change,” he thundered.
“I hear that happens to a lot of guys!” Justin blurted and began giggling. Will smiled down at his feet.
The frustrated rage that had been brewing in Clive’s chest boiled over. He changed in a joint popping instant and snarled viciously.
The kids took a hint at least and changed on the spot, shredding their clothes.